Today's Veterinary Business

OCT 2018

Today’s Veterinary Business provides information and resources designed to help veterinarians and office management improve the financial performance of their practices, allowing them to increase the level of patient care and client service.

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46 Today's Veterinary Business Leadership
We are naturally wired to
solve problems, make progress
and achieve results. The challenge
comes when we link our identity
and our definition of success solely
to the ability to predict situations
and control outcomes.
The complex,
unpredictable world we
find ourselves living in
is calling for something
more from us. As the
saying goes, "What got
us here won't get us to
where we need to go."
As leaders and
influencers, we are all
daunted by complexity
in some form. While we
all care greatly for the
important work we do
for people and animals,
game-changing disrup-
tions make it challeng-
ing to plan. Distractions
abound, and never-ending to-do
lists divert our attention from
what's really important. Our educa-
tion was not designed to prepare us
for this kind of complex world. Our
traditional narratives about success
implicitly, and often explicitly, teach
us that we should be
able to largely con-
trol and direct things
according to our wishes,
although realities sug-
gest otherwise.
In his book "Pres-
ence-Based Leadership,"
Doug Silsbee describes
complexity as some-
thing of a crapshoot.
He reassures us that the
gap between the needs
of the moment and our
ability to effectively
navigate this new ter-
ritory should come as
no surprise since we're
all facing conditions different from
what we're prepared for or could
possibly anticipate. He writes:
"Doing what has worked previously
is understandable. It's a predictable
reaction to a new and mysterious
set of conditions. And it's wrong."
Silsbee suggests that a radi-
cally new way of leading requires
developing a new way of seeing
ourselves and the world around us.
He states, "We begin by recogniz-
ing and acknowledging that we are
struggling, accepting that we want
things to be simpler and more pre-
dictable than they actually are, and
that we are at an impasse as to how
to navigate."
An Invitation to Surrender
The last sentence hit one of this
column's co-authors, Jeff Thoren,
like a ton of bricks. Here's Jeff:
"Life over the past year and
a half has been anything but
We love the veterinary profession. It attracts some of the most passionate, caring and down-to-earth
people — people with servant hearts who will give you the shirt off their back and who don't suffer from superin-
flated egos. You can't get much better than that. If you're reading this, we're talking about you!
It's also true that many of these same people are professionally driven high achievers who have a bias for ac-
tion and results. It's not uncommon to see some perfectionistic tendencies. All these things are, of course, neces-
sary ingredients for being recognized experts and thought leaders in any field, especially medicine. These attri-
butes serve us well in a complicated world that's characterized by predictability, where cause and effect are either
known or at least predictable and where it is possible, with the right expertise and effort, to find the right solution.
Leadership
GO WITH THE FLOW
By Jeff Thoren, DVM, BCC, PCC
By Trey Cutler, JD
controllable or predictable. And,
in retrospect, I have definitely
struggled with the uncertainty of
it all, frequently feeling like I am
stuck in a constant state of limbo.
On a cognitive level, I appreciate
that I have been presented with a
significant opportunity for learning
and growth and, on another more
emotional and visceral level, I have
found myself resisting and resent-
ing the process, even expressing
anger at times.
"I realize that I have been
resisting complexity itself, often
voicing the desire for things to
be simpler and easier. In essence,
'The cheese has moved' and I
have not yet fully changed and
adapted. (If you've read Spencer
Johnson's iconic book 'Who Moved
My Cheese?' you know what I'm
talking about.) An important first
step for me to embrace is the idea
of surrender.
Surrender to
the present
The experience of presence is a
doorway into both personal growth
and professional development.
Silsbee
suggests that
a radically
new way
of leading
requires
developing
a new way
of seeing
ourselves
and the world
around us.